UPDATE 10:45 AM: President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that his lawyers will seek to intervene in the lawsuit brought before the Supreme Court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. From The Epoch Times:
“We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!” Trump said in a tweet.
An intervention, in legal terms, is a procedure that lets a nonparty join ongoing litigation if the case affects the rights of that party. The court considering an application to intervene, in this case the U.S. Supreme Court, has the discretion to allow or deny such a request.
In the lawsuit, Texas is alleging that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin introduced last-minute unconstitutional changes to election laws, treated voters unequally, and triggered significant voting irregularities by relaxing ballot-integrity measures. The lawsuit is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to declare that the four battleground states conducted the 2020 election in violation of the Constitution.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE: (Headline USA) The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Republicans’ bid for a temporary injunction in an effort to reverse Pennsylvania‘s certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the electoral battleground.
But Tuesday night the Court asked defendant states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin to file replies to a lawsuit brought by Texas yesterday.
That lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to order state legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania to displace “tainted” election results in those States and choose their own slate of electors.
The Supreme Court posted online Tuesday evening: “Response to the motion for leave to file a bill of complaint and to the motion for a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order or, alternatively, for stay and administrative stay requested, due Thursday, December 10, by 3 pm.”
“It’s not unusual,” SMU Constitutional Law Professor Dale Carpenter told CBS 11 late Tuesday evening. “I don’t think it indicates anything very important… I think the court will act quickly on Thursday.”
Paxton sued battleground states on behalf of the State of Texas saying the states made unconstitutional changes to their laws before the 2020 election.
The court without comment refused to invoke an immediate remedy in the Pennsylvania lawsuit, but the case still appears to be alive. Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf already has certified Biden’s victory over President Donald Trump and the state’s 20 electors are to meet on Dec. 14 to cast their votes for Biden.
The court’s decision not to intervene came in a lawsuit led by Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northeastern Pennsylvania and GOP congressional candidate and Trump favorite Sean Parnell, who lost to Pittsburgh-area U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, a Democrat.
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had offered to argue the case, if the high court took it.
Having lost the request for the court to intervene immediately, Greg Teufel, a lawyer for Kelly and Parnell, said he will file a separate request to ask the court to consider the case on its underlying merits on an expedited basis.
Still, hopes for immediate intervention concerning the Nov. 3 election “substantially dimmed” with the court’s action Tuesday, Teufel said.
“But by no way is this over,” Kelly said on Fox News.
Republicans had pleaded with the justices to intervene immediately after the state Supreme Court turned away their case last week.
The Republicans argued that Pennsylvania’s expansive vote-by-mail law is unconstitutional because it required a constitutional amendment to authorize its provisions. Just one Republican state lawmaker voted against its passage last year in Pennsylvania’s Republican-controlled Legislature.
Biden leads Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016. Most mail-in ballots were submitted by Democrats.
Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.
